Hamlet In Purgatory
by 1angelette
Summary: The Comedie of Hamlet and the Court of Denmark in Purgatory. Did you think the adventures of Hamlet's cast were over because they died? They're not. Ophelia's not sane yet, Polonius is still a berk, and Hamlet has lots to do, says a Catholic schoolgirl...
1. Act I

**(A/N: Hello, dear readers. Welcome to the Comedie of Hamlet and the Royal Court of Denmark in Purgatory, or Hamlet In Purgatory for short. I do not own the works of William Shakespeare, but it's entirely legal to write his works because of the length of time he has been dead. I'm warning you now, this is written in Shakespearean prose. There are footnotes. Oh, and I don't own the extensive body of Greek mythology that Shakespeare borrowed lots from, either. This story owes a great debt to Tiger-Cub864, who inspired the idea with her fic "Redemption is a Funny Thing" and then consented to beta the fic! Please enjoy.)**

I.i

[Enter HAMLET, a young man (30, give or take) in dark medieval clothing with fair hair and a gold circlet on his head. He enters into the GENERIC FOREST.]

HAMLET: What, is this my consummation? Consumed am I not, as yet, but tales talk of flames and suffering that I am sure to see. When, swoopstake, I drew friend and foe, did winner and loser come off the table?

[A girl enters, of about sixteen or twenty with short black hair, wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and a cross necklace. Her shirt is emblazoned with the words "SAINT CLARE." She waves at HAMLET.]

ST. CLARE: Greetings, fair prince!  
HAMLET: Thy greetings are returned. Tell me this place.

ST. CLARE: Why, purgatory! Thou shalt be purged!

HAMLET: It shall be consummation, then?  
ST. CLARE: Oh, no, that 'tis foolish knavery, and only a knavish fool will find brimstone and fire. Thy sins are cleansed, purifying thine body in regard, not person.

HAMLET: How is it so?

ST. CLARE: 'Tis simplicity itself. Thou hast sins, have you not, and thou hast thus harmed others with thy sin. Therefore the object is to undo thy harm.

HAMLET: But how do this when the deed hath been done? Horrendous sins still cling unto mine soul, blacker than the darkest night, and cannot be absolved without being in life. This "undoing" is a bootless churning.  
ST. CLARE: Why, dost thou think thou art the only one who hast thus sinned?  
HAMLET: I do not.

ST. CLARE: Hence others are here as well, which thou hast known, and thou shalt with thy words absolve thy horrendous, clinging sins! Thus all is forgiven, all is simplicity, and all shalt to heaven go.

HAMLET: Well that sounds, but surely torments lie behind these painted words.

ST. CLARE: Nay, they do not. Thou shalt find those wronged by thou, and those that hath wronged thee shalt search out thee, and forgiveness shall throw as freely as Niobe's tears.

HAMLET: That is all?

ST. CLARE: That is all. Then the blessed Saint Mary shall bless thee—

HAMLET: Saint Mary?  
ST. CLARE: Well, Blessed Mary, Queen of Saints…

HAMLET: Nonetheless, a saint be she not.

ST. CLARE: Tell that to the schoolyard that hath claimed her so, as happily the seventeenth letter her queendom makes in their saintly twenty-sixth.

HAMLET: On schoolyards, thou seemst not to have left thy own long ago.

ST. CLARE: Poppycock. I am Clare, a saint. My very vestments declare it.

HAMLET: No, thou art naught. Mayhap thou wandered into a nunnery on thy death, perchance?

ST. CLARE: Mayhap I am a sister of the Clares Poor and do this for their praying's purpose?  
HAMLET: Thou art naught. A changeling, perhaps?  
ST. CLARE: Nay, mayhap I am a teacher in the school her order started?

HAMLET: Naught, naught, never hast thou taught.

ST. CLARE: Perchance a student in that same school, killed before the Fates gold thread mine cut, and guiding purging souls to prove my worth as Phoebus could not cart enough to grant me growth of reason?  
HAMLET: When that horse leaves the track, the stars shall leave their spheres.

ST. CLARE: But that shameful tale is the truth that thou shalt take if to heaven thou shall go! For that 'tis the schoolyard I last had.  
HAMLET: Fair, then, thy tale is.

ST. CLARE: Now thou must attend thy sins.

[They exit.]

[HAMLET enters the CLEARING; from the other side, enter LAERTES, a man Hamlet's age dressed in the same style, although less black.]

LAERTES: How now, dear Hamlet?

HAMLET: Laertes! What keeps you here?  
LAERTES: My sins at life, and so do thine?  
HAMLET: Indeed. Have you a youth, in guise of sainthood and peculiar dress, who guides the finding of thy sins?  
LAERTES: I have such a one. Now, Hamlet, of our lives on earth, we exchanged acquittals. Our not-saints have told us to find forgiveness, which we have. Thus our only business together is that of brotherly love.

HAMLET: Thou hast thieved my words before I spoke them. But what of mine uncle? Must I him forgive?

LAERTES: Nay, for of my finding he drinks hot fire and dances with cloved feet.

HAMLET: As he almost did in life.

LAERTES: Now, as he burns in hell, our sins are burnt in the same way.

HAMLET: That's good – my brood of wronged knaves is one less. There's mother, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and I think your father and sister…

[They start to face away from each other.]

LAERTES: My fair sister… a flower delicate as the morning dew, making Aurora seem a paltry forest nymph…

HAMLET: The most tragic death of all i' th' court…

LAERTES: And it was halfway your fault…

[A pause while they look at each other. Then they exit at different doors.]

[HAMLET and LAERTES enter the CLEARING.]

HAMLET: Since all that lies between us is love, we should each other help to the heavens above.

LAERTES: Now, have you seen Guildenstern and Rosencrantz? I know that by your work they're dead.

HAMLET: Indeed, and before that I treated them with manner that would offend a servant – or should have, at the least.

LAERTES: Look, walk they here now.

[ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN enter. They are two courtiers, rather obviously bumbling.]

HAMLET: Good morrow, gentlemen!  
ROSENCRANTZ: My lord?  
GUILDENSTERN: Why be you in this place?

HAMLET: Sirs, I beg your pardon.

ROSENCRANTZ: For what?  
HAMLET: For what? For what? 'Sblood! I played you for the fool you thought me and caused your deaths! This makes Athena out of Denmark's prince, yet these foolish twin Pallases see no flaw!  
GUILDENSTERN: Nay, the king wrote his notice killing us, signing it himself and sealing with his ring. What part in that was yours?  
HAMLET: Ah, but what of the very artful writing together we lived through in Wittenberg, and the signet ring of my dear father?

ROSENCRANTZ: I' faith?  
HAMLET: I' faith. Now, forgiveness can you give?  
GUILDENSTERN: But we deceived you, my lord, we were spies of the king.

HAMLET: A springe for guilty woodcocks! Your spying nature was day-clear the first you spoke to me on your return to Elsinore.

ROSENCRANTZ: Well, that looks happily to do enough.

GUILDENSTERN: May we take our leave, my lord?  
HAMLET: You understand not what I say.

ROSENCRANTZ: Marry—

GUILDENSTERN: We do not.

HAMLET: That was my thought. Now take thy asked leave.

[ROSENCRANTZ and GUILDENSTERN exit.]

LAERTES: The fools are an amusement.

HAMLET: It is, but yet an amusing success.

[ST. CLARE enters.]

ST. CLARE: Say, good gentlemen, mark in [pointing] that direction?

LAERTES: Yes, there be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern walking now away.

HAMLET: There is uncommon purpose in their gait.

ST. CLARE: Now mark you that bluish nearby light?  
HAMLET: Marry, what signal it?

ST. CLARE: Soft! Do not profane her name with oathing.

LAERTES: By our Lady! Is that—

ST. CLARE: Have you no ears? For such cursing I just shunned Hamlet!  
LAERTES: So one conversation and they to heaven go? Nay, 'tis not their desert?  
HAMLET: Desert should not dictate use, but justice still's not in this.

ST. CLARE: There's where your lives are noble and theirs not. Think you they knew they lack desert at all?

[They exit.]

[OPHELIA enters the CLEARING WITH LAKE. She is a twenty-something woman with long, thin hair, strewn with pansies, in a simple white dress. On her arms are several garlands of flowers. She is followed by a young man, the twin of St. Clare besides brown hair and a shirt proclaiming him SAINT JOHN. ST. JOHN miserably leans against a tree as OPHELIA merrily sits by the lake and starts to make a violet garland.]

ST. JOHN: Cock and Gis, I do hate to tolerate her madness. Ecstasy and purgatory make a tricky business. Now, not a soul in heaven could be mad, for the sake of heaven's souls. But maids like her, theirs is the very ecstasy of love, and they are the purest creatures of this earth. So purgatory serves to bring cold maids no longer quick into cold reason, quickly.

OPHELIA: [sings] _Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny/A down a down, call him a-down-a._

ST. JOHN: 'Tis a torturous process, and in her has been worse. [sings mockingly] _For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy._ Bah! A mark for all her sings of that song would make me the richest man in earth or heaven. But this is purgatory, and in the purging she fixed unto that song like Clytia on Hyperion, and to as much purpose. If I were to say bonny sweet Robin was all my joy, I would have to do it with one of her fennel wreaths i' hand.

OPHELIA: Do you of my flowers speak? For you here is one of columbines!

ST. JOHN: [starting] What, is the lady sensible? She has always spoken to her pool's reflection, or to the flowers she loves so, or to the thin air.

OPHELIA: Do you dislike it? Columbines are not worn with regard, mind you. It is a fancy with lesser passion.

ST. JOHN: Maid, have you ever wondered why flowers fill so much your days?  
OPHELIA: They do not alone. Too I gambol, and swim, and sing—

ST. JOHN: Oh, by the mass, do not sing!  
OPHELIA: [sings] _How should I your true love know/From another one?/By his cockle hat and staff/And his sandal shoon._

ST. JOHN: That's a brother apostle, not myself.

[HAMLET enters and hides behind a tree.]

HAMLET: Mark, the fair Ophelia! Can it be she?

OPHELIA: Now, I make a garland of violets, and that has the great meaning faithfulness. I seek violet-faith for those who lack presence but in my heart, although in this land where daises grow like grass, one cannot know. Oh, to make a wreath of rosemary, too – that's for remembrance, though 'tis painful to remember. [Sings.] _Then up he rose and donned his clothes/And dupped the chamber door/Let in the maid, who out a maid/Departed never more._

[SHE gathers her garlands and exits, followed by SAINT JOHN. However, there is still a garland of rosemary on the ground. HAMLET comes forth and picks it up.]

HAMLET: O, rosemary! There is such matter to her madness. Remembrance is a pain that likes me not. But it gets its gall not of itself, but by the people for whom it stands. These saints extort discourse to those that Fortune, the drab-keeper that she is, ha' sent off to another closet while we attempt avoidance of the nunneries that we scorn. Something-settled, Fortune thinks to fit us together, the good of which is too dear a halfpenny. O, she is a strumpet, to charge me withal heaven and hell. Were it what it 'twere…

[HAMLET exits, taking the rosemary with him and staring at it. As he does so, CURTAIN falls.]

* * *

Footnotes to Act I:

Scene One:

1: The whole "drawing swoopstake" thing is a betting term, meaning to take all the stakes on the table. It refers to how Hamlet's revenge harmed both his enemies and his allies.

9: Bootless: Useless. Often used when saying how "a housewife bootless churned" because a fairy cursed her milk.

14: Niobe is a character in Greek mythology who cried forever when her children died. She was turned into a rock from which water flowed.

20: Gained from real life, but translated into Shakespearean. I once saw a poster in a Catholic school that had a list of saints on it. For Q, they had "Mary, Queen of Saints". So apparently she's a saint somehow, even though technically she's only a "blessed", meaning she underwent beatification but not canonization.

28: Phoebus was a god of the sun. Back when it was believed the sun went 'round the earth, one revolution of Phoebus's cart meant one year. What it means is that Clare died before reaching the age of reason and is therefore in purgatory.

29: Ptolemaic theory, again from when it was believed the sun went 'round the earth. Stars and planets were believed to be fixed in spheres.

Scene Two:

7: Cloved feet. The devil was said to have them.

11: Aurora was a goddess of the morning.

Scene Three:

10: 'Sblood: An oath, by Christ's blood. Athena/Pallas: Athena had this friend named Pallas, who was her sparring buddy. Then she accidentally killed Pallas one day. She was sad about this forever and took the name "Pallas Athena".

16: Woodcocks were the medieval equivalent of the dodo bird. Springes were very simple traps, so simple that only woodcocks got caught in them.

17: Happily hear has the archaic meaning of "fortunately".

20: Marry, a very mild oath (about the level of "shucks") derived from Mary.

25: Mark: Look.

30: Soft: Hush, shh.

31: By our Lady: The oath that eventually became "bloody".

33: Desert: What they deserve.

34: A reference to in the original Hamlet, his speech about how "if all men are used to their desert, who should 'scape whipping?"

Scene Four:

1: Cock, Gis: A substitution for God and Jesus, respectively, in oaths. Ecstasy: Madness. Cold: Chaste. Quick: Living.

2: From Hamlet.

3: Bonny sweet Robin: Also from Hamlet. Mark: Danish currency, but you all knew that. Clytia/Hyperion: Clytia was this girl who once saw Apollo while he traveled through the sky and fell madly in love with him. She became fixed to the spot where she stood, always staring at the Apollo-sun, and eventually turned into a sunflower. Fennel: In flower language, it means deceit.

6: Ophelia is right; columbines have no meaning in the language of flowers.

10: This song is from Hamlet too. It refers to these pilgrims from the site of St. James, which is why Saint John objects.

13: Daisies are a symbol of dismemberment or death – i.e., all those who Ophelia is faithful to (her father, her brother, and Hamlet) are dead and live only in her heart, but here in the land of the dead she may see them. The song is a bawdy one from Hamlet, which in its whole (Ophelia here sings only part) is about a girl who on Valentine's day sneaks into the house of the boy she likes in the early morning, because the first girl a boy sees on Valentine's day is supposed to be his true love. But it doesn't work out and they don't get married. Quoth she, "Before you tumbled me/You promised me to wed"/"So would I done, by yonder sun/An thou not come to bed."

14: "It gets its gall" – i.e., it is painful because. Extort discourse to: demand conversation with. Drab-keeper: whore-keeper. Closet: Small chamber. Nunnery: Also a mocking term for a brothel. Something-settled: Somehow fixed. Too dear a halfpenny: Not worth a halfpenny. Strumpet: Elizabethan, roughly, for slut.


	2. Act II

**(A/N: Sorry that this took forever. I was terrified that this chapter wasn't as good as it should be, and then there were... complications. This chapter wouldn't come up at all if it weren't for Tiger-cub864, although... oh, never mind.)**

II.i

[POLONIUS and LAERTES enter the GENERIC FOREST.]

LAERTES: My dear father!  
POLONIUS: My good son!

LAERTES: How does this place like you?  
POLONIUS: Fairly enough. No thing is auspicious, nor anything dropping. In whole there is nothing I should want.

LAERTES: What, have you been transfigured into sheep?

POLONIUS: Why say you that?

[HAMLET enters.]

HAMLET: Good morrow, Laertes.

POLONIUS: The prince!  
HAMLET: Greetings, Polonius.

[POLONIUS steps back.]

POLONIUS: You!

HAMLET: It is I.

POLONIUS: Thou, murderous knave that dare profane the air with thy bawdy breath! Thou who slays carelessly, lisping tales of schooling and ghosts that do not pay even for the hearing. The lyingest knave in all of Christendom!

HAMLET: Knowing this be Purgatory, _is_ it Christendom?

LAERTES: Father—

POLONIUS: Soft, my son.

HAMLET: If this be of thy death—

POLONIUS: If? If? How can you look on me and tell me it is not? You part me from the living world and wonder why I hate thee? Where is thy shame? It hides behind thy cowardice, clinging to her skirts.

[HAMLET hits POLONIUS.]

HAMLET: Hear thy own words, knave! You speak of Christendom and block your ears to thy fellow man! Your words slap mine cheeks, when thou should turn thine own. Thou—

[LAERTES tries to separate them.]

LAERTES: Father! Prince! Look on thyselves!

POLONIUS: This is not thy office, son.

HAMLET: Our business is not thine, though my pity is with you for thy father.

POLONIUS: What? Thou villainous knave—

LAERTES: Father, mark you that cloud?  
POLONIUS: Which cloud?  
LAERTES: The cloud in butter-churn shape.

POLONIUS: Indeed, it is like cloud translated into a churning churn.

[LAERTES, as POLONIUS says this line, exits. HAMLET realizes LAERTES's trick and exits after him. POLONIUS, after two beats, sees that he has left.]

POLONIUS: O, the artless miscreant. He thinks himself a trout – nay, a salmon – nay, a pike – nay, a swordfish… He thinks himself a slippery sliding eel, ducking and weaving out of every fisher's net. I am no fishmonger!

[HE exits.]

Scene Two:

[ST. CLARE and ST. JOHN enter the CLEARING.]

ST. JOHN: How now, fair sister?

ST. CLARE: Not sister, my brother.

ST. JOHN: Your tongue denies what your mouth does acknowledge?

ST. CLARE: That it does. This goes here and that goes there, does it not?

ST. JOHN: It does.

ST. CLARE: Nothing does!

ST. JOHN: This and that are nothing?  
ST. CLARE: They are, just like the whole mind of mine Hamlet.

ST. JOHN: Again that for my dearest Ophelia.

ST. CLARE: Thus treble nothing for them both! Am I right?

ST. JOHN: Indeed thou art. I cannot make sense out of the maiden. She by turns senses and sings.

ST. CLARE: I'faith, for the sake of our loves' charges, and our charges' loves, we must be that senses. But how?  
ST. JOHN: Well, should not again convening complete the thing?

ST. CLARE: Give thy cause away! Thou would make them to salt in each other's wounds?

ST. JOHN: …I would not, but what would you?

ST. CLARE: Dost thou think that, were the young Hamlet to catch most fleeting sight of fair Ophelia, 'twould set his heart into a second ecstasy?

ST. JOHN: Would that he would chase her, I doubt she would translate to laurels.

ST. CLARE: Well, hast thou any ideas superior?

ST. JOHN: I do not. Hast thou?

[ST. CLARE crosses her arms and smiles. THEY shake hands and exit in the same direction.]

Scene Three:

[GENERIC FOREST. At stage left is a bouquet of fennel on the ground. HAMLET and LAERTES stand center upstage.]

HAMLET: Could you be in any creature's shape, what shape would you be in?

LAERTES: Would I not be shaped like myself?  
HAMLET: No, for thou wouldst be a creature, not thyself.

LAERTES: But if I were a creature, then the shape of that creature would be the shape I was myself.

HAMLET: Thy wits are sharp.

[OPHELIA enters from stage right, walking to stage left.]

OPHELIA: [sings] _All you that merry lives do lead/although your means be little/That seldom are o'erseen in bread/nor take much thought for vittle/Attend while I'll exemplify the mind that I do carry/I take delight both morne and night/to have mine own vagary. _

[She ceases to sing, catching sight of the bouquet.] Mark! A sprig of fennel!

[SHE runs to stage right, taking the fennel as she goes, and exits in that direction. HAMLET and LAERTES are shocked for a few beats before speaking again.]

LAERTES: Was that my fair sister?  
HAMLET: I do think it was.

LAERTES: Was she still distracted?

HAMLET: I'faith, I do not know. Did you see violets in her hair?  
LAERTES: I did, and she did run barefoot. Then distracted she was.

HAMLET: Think you she is sensible?  
LAERTES: Sensing to the flowers, but not us.

HAMLET: Could here there be happy circumstance to cure her?  
LAERTES: No wound ever healed but not by degrees.

HAMLET: Her condition seems fair, but not all of it.

LAERTES: Has she still even choler?

HAMLET: I know not.

LAERTES: Perhaps mutualities should be hard at hand.

HAMLET: They should not.

LAERTES: Wherefore? Surely she may become the more slipper as she evades our grasp.

HAMLET: Look after an advantage to it, then.

[HAMLET exits, soon followed by LAERTES, as the CURTAIN falls.]

Footnotes to Act II:

Scene Two:

13: Endue; endow.

14: "Give thy cause away"; give up your cause.

17: A reference to the myth of Apollo and Daphne. Apollo fell in love with Daphne, but she didn't like him, so he chased her, so she ran away and turned into a laurel tree. Laurels, as you obviously know, are a symbol of victory. St. John thinks that Hamlet seeing Ophelia and chasing her would not even lead to that half-victory.

Scene Three:

6: An Elizabethan ballad; really just the first verse. Fennel, as you know already from previous footnotes, is a symbol of treachery or deceit. Subtextually, it was planted by one of the saints.

9: Distracted; mad.

15: Happy; fortunate.

16: From Othello.

17: Condition actually means character or disposition as well. In other words, Hamlet is saying she still appears to be happy and nice, but not in the best (mental) condition.

18: Choler; anger.

20: Mutualities; pleasantries. Hard at hand; immediate.

22: Slipper: Slippery.

23: Advantage: Opportunity.


End file.
